


and all the birds have flown

by anarchetypal



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Murder, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, detective shane, informal narration, serial killer Ryan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 14:50:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13790007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchetypal/pseuds/anarchetypal
Summary: Detective MadejknowsRyan Bergara is guilty, but there’s no evidence. Nothing will stick to him. He’s like smoke, and Shane can’t catch him.Well.There’s no evidence.And then a body turns up in Shane’s apartment.





	and all the birds have flown

**Author's Note:**

> so this was borne from doing some headcanoning with tumblr user gamersnork; i cleaned it up and added some meaty bits and this was the result. the informal narration is a result of the fact that this started out as basically a chatfic, sorry!
> 
> anyway i desperately want more serial killer ryan in this fandom, so take this offering
> 
> this was also posted (even more informally) on my tumblr here: anarchetypal.tumblr.com

 

In the interrogation room, Ryan is quietly smug and not-so-quietly obsessed with Shane, and dangerous, and deadlydeadlydeadly. Shane slowly but surely finds himself getting hooked on that, on the darkness creeping from Ryan to himself, spreading like a disease, crawling under his skin, pulsing in his blood.

Shane  _knows_ Ryan’s guilty but there’s no evidence. Nothing will stick to him; he’s like smoke and Shane can’t catch him.

Well.

There’s no evidence.

And then there’s a body in Shane’s apartment.

——

There’s a body on his kitchen floor, and he’s been a detective for a while now, so he’s seen blood before, he’s seen blood but never like this, like it’s a love letter passed in the back of a classroom, ink red and running and here, look, I made this for you, I did this for you, see what I’ll do  ~~to~~  for you look at it  ~~look what you’ll become—~~

He gags and feels a rush of heat, and his thoughts are a stuttering, broken record of  _thatsmethatsmethatsmethatsgonnabeme—_

He stumbles outside because he can’t escape the overwhelming stench of copper anywhere in his apartment, and bends double and dry-heaves when he hits fresh air.

When he looks up, there’s Ryan, leaning against the wall of the apartment building, bundled in a jacket and chain-smoking menthols, the cherry glowing orange between his fingers as he breathes in real slow.

Ryan grins at him with smoke pouring from the cracks between his teeth, and there's not a drop of blood on him, but for a split second Shane can see red on his hands and his face and in his eyes.  _Evening, detective,_  says Ryan, and Shane turns and vomits over the dead bushes lining the walkway.

There’s a hand rubbing his back and he thinks about swatting it away but ultimately fails to. Says, _You gonna kill me?_ with his voice hoarse and cracking and Ryan just laughs at him.

Says,  _Do you want me to?_

Leaves him there on the sidewalk before he can figure out an answer.

Shane struggles to get composed and finally forces himself to walk back upstairs with shaking legs. Grabs his phone. Dials 911.

And then he sets his phone down.

And takes care of the body.

Takes care of it _tenderly_. He moves it like John Doe is just sleeping. Drives out into the California desert and buries him in the middle of the night. Stays up until sunrise washing the blood off his floor and bleaching the tile and not thinking about much of anything at all, too scared to reflect, too afraid to make this more real than it already is.

He brings white lilies to that spot a few days later and drops them in the dirt. Tells himself that this helps. Makes it better.

(It doesn’t.)

Ryan sees him three weeks after that and, grinning, asks how the department liked his gift. Shane says, _They didn’t._  Ryan laughs. 

Two weeks after that, Ryan shows up at Shane’s apartment with this kind of shocked expression on his face, and as soon as Shane opens the door, he says,  _You didn’t tell them._ And Shane opens his mouth, looks away, closes his mouth. Silently nods.

Ryan kisses him stupid right there in his doorway. Drags him down by the collar of his shirt instead of going up on tiptoe. Drags him down to his level and  _bites_ and Shane goes into work the next day with a split lip and a purple bruise under his jaw. Doesn’t get much done that day.

——

Ryan leaves him bodies like that maybe a few more times, and Shane almost— almost gets used to it. Doesn't get numb to it but stops vomiting after the third one. Stops leaving flowers on disturbed earth in the middle of the desert with the moon throwing his shadow into fresh graves.

He has nightmares of Ryan killing him with his bare hands, fingers digging bruises into his throat, and wakes up hard and gasping.

And then one day Shane enters his apartment, and there's another figure on his kitchen floor covered in blood, and he sighs.

And then the body sucks in a strangled, gurgling breath.

Shane jolts, a scream dying, aborted, in his throat, and stumbles back and stares with wide eyes.

Obviously, the thing to do is call for an ambulance. The guy is still alive; he’s unconscious, but he’s breathing, or at least trying to. Shane needs to call 911.

He doesn’t.

He stands there.

He watches.

There’s blood crawling across his kitchen tile and he does nothing. He watches this man die. It only takes about a minute. In one second there is a person, and in the next there is a body. There wasn't anything he could've done, he tells himself. An ambulance wouldn’t have made it in time. The man was moments from death.

As he cleans up, he wonders how Ryan didn’t notice. How Ryan didn’t see the rise and fall of the man’s chest. The pulse jumping erratically in his neck. How could Ryan be so sloppy?

When Shane walks in on another near-dead figure in his apartment a few weeks later, he realizes Ryan wasn’t being sloppy at all.

Outdoor cats are prone to bringing humans prey in various stages of injury: mice with torn limbs, birds with broken wings, partially-eviscerated snakes. They bring dying things that can’t get away.

Because they’re trying to teach you how to hunt.

The man in his kitchen now is bleeding from the neck, eyes glazed, almost catatonic and sitting on the floor leaning up haphazardly against the refrigerator. He’s bleeding out, sure, but he isn’t seconds from death.

Shane is galvanized into action this time. Grabs a towel and puts pressure on the wound— But does only that. Just sits there, pressing down and trembling and staring into the man’s eyes, and realizing—

He looks like Shane. 

Tall, lean, scruffy. Same hair color.

And Ryan must’ve gone poking around in Shane’s room, because the guy is wearing Shane’s spare glasses. 

Shane realizes this, and slowly, slowly leans back off the towel.

There’s something about watching the life leave somebody’s eyes that makes Shane feel...different in the aftermath. Changed.

He’s terrified of it.

And he wants more.

——

It comes to a head on an unusually chilly night in early March. Shane leaves the precinct after slogging through a mountain of paperwork and trying not to dwell on the ironic exhibition of a performance art his career has become, and as he’s fumbling with his keys at his front door, he catches a whiff of menthol cigarettes. Freezes with his hand on the doorknob.

He stands there for a minute, warring with himself, before walking inside.

It’s been months since he’s vomited at the sight of a victim, but Ryan’s done a hell of a number on this one.

John Doe—because that’s what he’ll become, and because the only way Shane can do this without suffering a mental break is to turn these people into Victims, into Bodies, into Things, into puzzle pieces to fit into this case he’ll never solve because he can’t because he doesn’t want to—

John Doe is tied to one of his kitchen chairs and his face is near-featureless with how much it’s been cut up and bruised. Shane can feel the pain radiating off him.  

He’s alive and awake, but he’s broken. And he’s dying. Very slowly and very painfully.

His eyes are nearly swollen shut but they widen when he sees Shane; he lets out a noise that might be words, but it's incomprehensible and sounds like it hurts to make.

Ryan has left a knife on the table.

In some faraway part of his mind, Shane thinks it’s pretty for something so full of deadly promise. It’s a sizable folding knife, gold and a little iridescent, free of blood.

It catches the light when Shane picks it up.

The gentle  _shhk_ of it unfolding makes John Doe jolt and start making more of those awful sounds, all hoarse and grating and choking on blood. It’d be an act of kindness, Shane tells himself. It’d take away his pain. Nurses do this. Doctors. Angels of mercy.

It’s a kindness. It’s a kindness. This is a kindness—

Blood spills hot over Shane’s fingers.

——

Ryan’s picked up a bad habit of smoking in front of Shane’s apartment building.

(Shane’s picked up a weakness for the scent of cigarette smoke and the taste of menthol.)

_Here_ , says Shane.

Ryan stares down at the gold knife being held out to him.

Shane cleaned it thoroughly, reverently. Made it pure again, or as close as it can ever get. It catches the light of the setting sun and reflects a bright, quaking beam onto Shane’s chest like the laser sight of a marksman’s gun.

Ryan’s expression is almost savagely pleased, eyes electrified, like the sight of his knife in Shane’s hands is better than any erotic image his mind could conjure up.

He looks back up at Shane and reaches out, but instead of taking the knife, he curls Shane’s fingers closed over it.

Says,  _You keep it,_  voice low and thick with heat.

Shane, heart in his throat, breathes,  _For what?_

Ryan grins at him, snubs out the cigarette against the wall, and gestures for Shane to lead the way up to his apartment.

_Oh, I'm sure you’ll think of something_.

——

And Shane does.


End file.
